Ghost
by The Hobbit's Rhapsody
Summary: The loss of the youngest son of Fëanor:  to his love, to his family, to the Oath, to life.  Oneshot.


**A/N: ****Parentheses signify dialogue, except in II, where parentheses signify thoughts and everything else is dialogue, and IV, where parentheses signify thoughts and everything else is narration.  
>Verb tense changes are intentional.<br>****(Sorry for any confusion; it all kind of came out this way when I was writing it and I liked it too much to change it.)**

**Tolkien created and can take credit for these characters and their plot; only (most of) the words on the page are mine, and I'm getting no compensation from them besides the affirmation of you wonderful fanfiction readers.**

Elvish:_  
>Namarië<em> - farewell (Quenya)  
><em>hiril<em> - lady (Sindarin)  
><em>Amil<em> - mother (Quenya)  
><em>Atar<em> - father (Quenya)

* * *

><p><strong>I.<strong>

As soon as he opened the door, she knew he was lost to her.

The air was full of rain—shaking in the wind, shattering against the trees, breathing liquidity into the soil. He was drenched in it.

One smile he proffered her, but it was lit with a warning of doom rather than happiness. She did not know the fey look that limned his face, springing silver and hot crimson through his eyes, lingering tense in his narrow muscles.

(You have heard.)

(There is no one who has not heard.) Her voice retained perfect quietude, such a contrast to the wildness that seemed to dwell, carefully restrained, within his frame.

His fingertips danced once across her cheek—the most intimate touch they had shared, and the last—and her own were too slow to catch his hand as it fell back to his side.

(Namarië, hiril.) He had always been one to mix his languages, flighty and surefooted at once.

Any hopes she had entertained of his someday living as part of her life, and not merely her heart, whispered into abrupt nothingness, like a candle flame extinguished by an unexpected breeze.

Slate-colored eyes watched the youngest Noldo prince and his Fate leave her doorstep, never to return.

* * *

><p><strong>II.<strong>

_Please, Fëanáro. Let one at least stay behind with me, for ought not a mother be spared the grief of losing all her children? (For they are fated, now; did I not foresee it?)_

_Worry is not typical of thee. Why dost thou make such demands of me?_

_(Thy sanity slips, though thou knowest it not.) The Oath bodes ill, and it will take my children from me. Amrod and Amras—two russet-tops hast thou; may not both of them be stolen from the world! Let one remain with me._

_Nay, for all sons seven have held their blades to mine in the Name of Ilúvatar, and may not be released from their bond for the sake of any love or glory, even thy well-made heart._

_Husband, one of them will not return. (O! What hast thou done? The Valar, the wise ones, will not look kindly on any of thee, whether should thou fulfill thine oath or break it!) The youngest of my sons—let him stay._

_Let this talk be at an end, Nerdanel. No more on the matter will I say; if thou wishes not to be bereft of thy son, thou wouldst follow us to the conquering of the Foe._

_That will never be, for no reproach will I bear for the foolery of my husband._

_Then grieve if thou must, but lay not such dire dooms upon our hallowed quest._

_(Thou dost not kno__w I have been grieving for thee these past years, as I have watched the love thou once held for me and for thy sons and—even, yes, Finwë—bleeding into the very works of thy hands.) Leave me then to my sorrows, Fëanáro, and thou shalt soon enough feel them as keenly as I._

_Bitterly we part, then?_

_Eru keep thee, but thy errand is named folly; it dost carry thee to grief, and not the glory for which thou dost hope. There is no other way of parting. (I have loved thee long, husband, and the loss of my heart is to be my part in the Doom of the Noldor, though thou mayest know it not.)_

* * *

><p><strong>III.<strong>

Ambarussa complains of the hardness of the ground, and will not come ashore. All our brothers are gathered under the misty dusk above. I cannot see how he does not ache for the open sky—I would not want to spend one hour more in the blood-hallowed belly of this ship.

He is too fey about the face; even a stranger would know us apart now, by the hollowness in his cheeks. (Will you not come ashore, brother?) I am recalled of his mother-name, the middling mother-name, Umbarto.

(No, brother. Worry not on my behalf.)

(I will rouse you in the morn.)

He laughs like the sun. I worry for him.

* * *

><p><strong>IV.<strong>

Orange light spasms across his eyelids, and the warmth on his face rouses him in gentle surprise. (Surely I have not slept so late; did not Ambarussa promise to rouse me?)

The wave of heat that rams itself down his throat, snapping at his skin, terrifies him into full wakefulness.

Dawn has not yet come; or if it has, he shall never set eyes on it.

What roars at him now is death—he cannot recall its name—horrifically hot and bloated, tearing at him, flaying his skin from his body with mere licks of its swelling, scorching tongue. Its sister, dancing on its shoulders, is black and thick, stabbing at his eyes and throat, and air will not come. He cannot scream for his agony; he cannot scream for help.

(Amil?)

He thinks that in his terror he is delirious, but he is only dying.

(Why did Ambarussa not wake me?)

(Does Atar mislove me so?)

His thoughts slip from him, fragmenting again and again, and the last thing he knows is that there will be nothing left of him when the death—blinding and all-encompassing, now—has uncradled his body.

* * *

><p><strong>V.<strong>

The swans of the Teleri scatter across the water—necks broken, feathers charred—as ash and flotsam wind-drifted. The dull orange still flickering on the sea melds with the stark and accusing crimson of the dawn. The Noldor stand silhouetted by the labor of their starless and half-sleepless night.

Six girdle the king where seven ought to stand.

Twin's face now bloodless, eyes fierce, lost, wracked with understanding, father-slain in heart as he knows his dearest brother now father-slain in body.

(Rightly you gave the name to the youngest of your children.) How sour the words, bitter and terrible. He is the youngest in truth now. He speaks his twin's name again, in ineffable anguish, steel-cold in the harbinger's voice with which his mother once spoke nearly the same words.

Silence, as no sign of dismay is visible on the face of the Sprit of Fire.

(Fell and fey you are become.) Less his mother's child than Ambarussa ever was, Ambarussa still reconciles no rightfulness to his father's actions in this matter; he would not believe either in his brother's cowardice. Let both be wrong, and let one at least have lived.

The Oath drags them on, even from this place.

* * *

><p><em><strong>finis<strong>_

* * *

><p><em>"…In the morning [after the burning of the ships] the host was mustered, but of Fëanor's seven sons only six were to be found.<br>__Then Ambarussa went pale with fear. 'Did you not then rouse my brother Ambarussa (whom you called Ambarto)?' he said. 'He would not come ashore to sleep (he said) in discomfort.' But it is thought (and no doubt Fëanor guessed this also) that it was in the mind of Ambarto to sail his ship back and rejoin Nerdanel; for he had been much shocked by the deeds of his father.  
><em>_'That ship I destroyed first,' said Fëanor (hiding his own dismay).  
><em>_'Then rightly you gave the name to the youngest of your children,' said Ambarussa, 'and Umbarto "The Fated" was its true form. Fell and fey you are become.' And after that no one dared to speak again to Fëanor of this matter._

- from "The Shibboleth of Fëanor" - _The Peoples of Middle-Earth_ - J. R. R. Tolkien


End file.
